CO2

JPMorgan Employee Who Invented Credit Default Swaps is One of the Key Architects of Carbon Derivatives, Which Would Be at the Very CENTER of Cap and Trade

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You just can’t make this stuff up!


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Blythe Masters invented credit default swaps, and is now heading JPM’s carbon trading efforts

As I have previously shown, speculative derivatives (especially credit default swaps or “CDS”) are a primary cause of the economic crisis. They were largely responsible for bringing down Bear Stearns, AIG (and see this), WaMu and other mammoth corporations.

According to top experts, risky derivatives were not only largely responsible for bringing down the American (and world) economy, but they still pose a substantial systemic risk:

  • Warren Buffett called them “weapons of mass destruction” in 2003
  • Warren Buffett’s sidekick Charles T. Munger, has called the CDS prohibition the best solution, and said “it isn’t as though the economic world didn’t function quite well without it, and it isn’t as though what has happened has been so wonderfully desirable that we should logically want more of it”
  • Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan – after being one of their biggest cheerleaders – now says CDS are dangerous
  • Former SEC chairman Christopher Cox said “The virtually unregulated over-the-counter market in credit-default swaps has played a significant role in the credit crisis”
  • Newsweek called CDS “The Monster that Ate Wall Street”
  • President Obama said in a June 17 speech on his plans for finance industry regulatory reform that credit swaps and other derivatives “have threatened the entire financial system”
  • George Soros says the market is still unsafe, and that credit- default swaps are “toxic” and “a very dangerous derivative” because it’s easier and potentially more profitable for investors to bet against companies using them than through so-called short sales.
  • U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters introduced a bill in July that tried to ban credit-default swaps because she said they permitted speculation responsible for bringing the financial system to its knees.
  • Nobel prize-winning economist Myron Scholes – who developed much of the pricing structure used in CDS – said that over-the-counter CDS are so dangerous that they should be “blown up or burned”, and we should start fresh
  • A leading credit default swap expert (Satyajit Das) says that the new credit default swap regulations not only won’t help stabilize the economy, they might actually help to destabilize it.
  • Senator Cantwell says that the new derivatives legislation is weaker than current regulation

Round Two: Carbon Derivatives

Now, Bloomberg notes that the carbon trading scheme will be largely centered around derivatives:

The banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell carbon-related financial products to outside investors.

[Blythe] Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the mix, she says. Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity — in this case, CO2 and other greenhouse gases…

Who is Blythe Masters?

She is the JPMorgan employee who invented credit default swaps, and is now heading JPM’s carbon trading efforts. As Bloomberg notes (this and all remaining quotes are from the above-linked Bloomberg article):

Masters, 40, oversees the New York bank’s environmental businesses as the firm’s global head of commodities…
As a young London banker in the early 1990s, Masters was part of JPMorgan’s team developing ideas for transferring risk to third parties. She went on to manage credit risk for JPMorgan’s investment bank.

Among the credit derivatives that grew from the bank’s early efforts was the credit-default swap.

Some in congress are fighting against carbon derivatives:

“People are going to be cutting up carbon futures, and we’ll be in trouble,” says Maria Cantwell, a Democratic senator from Washington state. “You can’t stay ahead of the next tool they’re going to create.”

Cantwell, 51, proposed in November that U.S. state governments be given the right to ban unregulated financial products. “The derivatives market has done so much damage to our economy and is nothing more than a very-high-stakes casino — except that casinos have to abide by regulations,” she wrote in a press release…

However, Congress may cave in to industry pressure to let carbon derivatives trade over-the-counter:

The House cap-and-trade bill bans OTC derivatives, requiring that all carbon trading be done on exchanges…The bankers say such a ban would be a mistake…The banks and companies may get their way on carbon derivatives in separate legislation now being worked out in Congress…

Read moreJPMorgan Employee Who Invented Credit Default Swaps is One of the Key Architects of Carbon Derivatives, Which Would Be at the Very CENTER of Cap and Trade

Climategate and the Tiger Woods Index; Al Gore cancels Copenhagen speaking event

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Due to unforeseen circumstances, Al Gore has had to cancel a Copenhagen speaking event at which he had hoped to charge starry-eyed believers in his ManBearPig religion $1200 a piece for the privilege of shaking his hand, breathing in his CO2 and having his latest book inflicted on them.

Could those unforeseen circumstances have anything to do with Climategate?

I think so. Climategate is now huge. Way, way bigger than the Mainstream Media (MSM) is admitting it is – as Richard North demonstrates in this fascinating analysis. Using what he calls a Tiger Woods Index (TWI), he compares the amount of interest being shown by internet users (as shown by the number of general web pages on Google) and compares it with the number of news reports recorded. The ratio indicates what people are really interested in, as opposed to what the MSM thinks they ought to be interested in.

North explains:

Tiger Woods delivered 22,500,000 web and 46,025 news pages, giving ratio of 489. That is the “Tiger Woods Index” (TWI) against which I chose to measure a raft of other issues.

Here are the rankings:

1. Climategate: 28,400,000 – 2,930 = 9693
2. Afghanistan: 143,000,000 – 154,145 = 928
3. Obama: 202,000,000 – 252,583 = 800
4. Tiger Woods: 22,500,000 – 46,025 = 489
5. Gordon Brown: 12,300,000 – 37,021 = 332
6. Climate change: 22,200,000 – 68,419 = 324
7. Sally Bercow: 25,000 – 86 = 290
8. David Cameron: 545,000 – 4837 = 113
9. Meredith Kercher: 261,000 – 3,471 = 75
10. Chilcot Inquiry: 125,000 – 4,350 = 29

Read moreClimategate and the Tiger Woods Index; Al Gore cancels Copenhagen speaking event

Lord Christopher Monckton – Climategate: Caught Greenhanded! Cold Facts About The Hot Topic of Global Temperature Change After The Climategate Scandal

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Monckton-Caught Green-Handed Climate Gate Scandal

Lord Christopher Monckton – Climategate: Caught Greenhanded! Cold Facts About The Hot Topic of Global Temperature Change After The Climategate Scandal (PDF)

Read moreLord Christopher Monckton – Climategate: Caught Greenhanded! Cold Facts About The Hot Topic of Global Temperature Change After The Climategate Scandal

Climategate: It’s all unravelling now!

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So many new developments: which story do we pick? Maybe best to summarise, instead. After all, it’s not like you’re going to find much of this reported in the MSM.

1. Australia’s Senate rejects Emissions Trading Scheme for a second time. Or: so turkeys don’t vote Christmas. Expect to see a lot more of this: politicians starting to become aware their party’s position on AGW is completely out of kilter with the public mood and economic reality. Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme – what Andrew Bolt calls “a $114 billion green tax on everything” – would have wreaked havoc on the coal-dependent Australian economy. That’s why several opposition Liberal frontbenchers resigned rather than vote with the Government on ETS; why Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull lost his job; and why the Senate voted down the ETS.

2. Danes caught fiddling their carbon credits. (Hat tip: Philip Stott) Carbon trading is the Emperor’s New Clothes of international finance. It was invented by none other than Ken Lay, whose Enron would currently be one of the prime beneficiaries in the global alternative energy market, if it hadn’t been shown to be (nearly) as fraudulent as the current AGW scam. It is a licence to fleece, cheat and rob. Still, jolly embarrassing for the Danes to get caught red handed, what with their hosting a conference shortly in which the world’s leaders will try, straight-faced, to persuade us that carbon emissions trading is the only viable way of defeating ManBearPig.  ‘People don’t trade carbon because they are good people,’ exclaims Patrick Birley, the chief executive of the ICE European Climate Exchange

3. Hats off to The Daily Express – the first British newspaper to make the AGW scam its front page story.

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The piece was inspired by another bravura performance by Professor Ian Plimer, the Aussie geologist who argues that climate change has been going on quite naturally, oblivious of human activity, for the last 4,567 million years.

Read moreClimategate: It’s all unravelling now!

‘People don’t trade carbon because they are good people,’ exclaims Patrick Birley, the chief executive of the ICE European Climate Exchange

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The entire system is based on fraud:

– Global Warming Scam Exposed:

Prof. Ian Clark: ‘Rises in C02 lag 800 years behind temperature rises. So temperature is leading CO2 by 800 years!’

So the Al-Gore link is the wrong way round and CO2 can’t be responsible for rises in temperature and global warming.

– Study: CO2 levels remained constant since 1850! (University of Bristol)

It is all about the money!

European Climate Exchange chief Patrick Birley defends the carbon trading system

The coal-fired Fiddlers Ferry power station in Warrington emits vapour into the night sky
The coal-fired Fiddlers Ferry power station in Warrington emits vapour into the night sky Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

“Why should it be different as a commodity to the way people trade oil or gas?”

As the man in charge of the world’s biggest exchange for companies, banks and hedge funds to trade permits to emit carbon dioxide, Birley is fed up with the environmentalists’ charge that dirty capitalists should not profit from the global effort to tackle climate change.

Ahead of the Copenhagen summit next week, campaigners such as Friends of the Earth have argued that the entire system is so flawed it may need to be demolished in favour of a straightforward tax on polluters.

Firstly, they insist, the European system has failed in its fundamental aim to reduce emissions, meaning its only effect is to redistribute wealth among companies and traders. Secondly, the market is a magnet for derivatives that few people understand, brewing up a second sub-prime bubble. Lastly, the opportunities for fraud are vast, given the intangible nature of the product. .

These well-worn concerns are resurfacing as the whole concept of carbon trading stands at a crossroads. This totally invented $126bn (£76bn) market has the potential to flare into a $2 trillion green giant over the next decade, if US President Obama manages to push his carbon trading bill through the Senate early next year.

Read more‘People don’t trade carbon because they are good people,’ exclaims Patrick Birley, the chief executive of the ICE European Climate Exchange

Climategate: The great climate change science scandal

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It took a while but now here is the Times reporting on Climategate …

Leaked emails have revealed the unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warming

The storm began with just four cryptic words. “A miracle has happened,” announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change.

“RC” said nothing more — but included a web link that took anyone who clicked on it to another site, Real Climate.

There, on the morning of November 17, they found a treasure trove: a thousand or so emails sent or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

Jones is a key player in the science of climate change. His department’s databases on global temperature changes and its measurements have been crucial in building the case for global warming.

What those emails suggested, however, was that Jones and some colleagues may have become so convinced of their case that they crossed the line from objective research into active campaigning.

In one, Jones boasted of using statistical “tricks” to obliterate apparent declines in global temperature. In another he advocated deleting data rather than handing them to climate sceptics. And in a third he proposed organised boycotts of journals that had the temerity to publish papers that undermined the message.

It was a powerful and controversial mix — far too powerful for some. Real Climate is a website designed for scientists who share Jones’s belief in man-made climate change. Within hours the file had been stripped from the site.

Several hours later, however, it reappeared — this time on an obscure Russian server. Soon it had been copied to a host of other servers, first in Saudi Arabia and Turkey and then Europe and America.

What’s more, the anonymous poster was determined not to be stymied again. He or she posted comments on climate-sceptic blogs, detailing a dozen of the best emails and offering web links to the rest. Jones’s statistical tricks were now public property.

Steve McIntyre, a prominent climate sceptic, was amazed. “Words failed me,” he said. Another, Patrick Michaels, declared: “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.”

Read moreClimategate: The great climate change science scandal

Climate crunch: David Bellamy on global warming fraud

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November 25, 2009:

A Current Affair interviews three people about global warming and the emissions trading scheme, all of whom agree the public is being duped without the reporter or presenter suggesting these people are speaking anything other than plain sense.

It has been revealed Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme will send the average family’s bills soaring about $1100.

Read moreClimate crunch: David Bellamy on global warming fraud

Flashback: David Ballamy: ‘BBC shunned Me For Denying Man-Made Global Warming’

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“Being ignored by the likes of the BBC does not really bother me, not when there are much bigger problems at stake.
I might not be on TV any more but I still go around the world campaigning about these important issues. For example, we must stop the dest­ruc­tion of trop­ical rainforests, something I’ve been saying for 35 years.”

“Mother nature will balance things out but not if we interfere by destroying rainforests and overfishing the seas.
That is where the real environmental catastrophe could occur.”

David Ballamy is exactly right and we have to rebuilt the forests and allow nature to heal itself now.

Just take a look at what happened to Italy, Greece and Spain.

All of those countries had huge forests before they were cut down for their growing empires.

Now look what happened to the climate there.

Man-made global warming is a scam.

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SHUNNED: Naturalist David Bellamy

FOR YEARS David Bellamy was one of the best known faces on TV.

A respected botanist and the author of 35 books, he had presented around 400 programmes over the years and was appreciated by audiences for his boundless enthusiasm.

Yet for more than 10 years he has been out of the limelight, shunned by bosses at the BBC where he made his name, as well as fellow scientists and environmentalists.

His crime? Bellamy says he doesn’t believe in man-made global warming.

Here he reveals why – and the price he has paid for not toeing the orthodox line on climate change.

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CLANGER: Bellamy says Al Gore has ‘no proof’ that millions will die due to global warming

“When I first stuck my head above the parapet to say I didn’t believe what we were being told about global warming I had no idea what the consequences would be.

I am a scientist and I have to ­follow the directions of science but when I see that the truth is being covered up I have to voice my ­opinions.

According to official data, in every year since 1998 world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002 Arctic ice actually increased. Why, then, do we not hear about that?

The sad fact is that since I said I didn’t believe human beings caused global warming I’ve not been allowed to make a TV programme.

My absence has been noticed, because wherever I go I meet people who say: “I grew up with you on the television, where are you now?”

Read moreFlashback: David Ballamy: ‘BBC shunned Me For Denying Man-Made Global Warming’

Study: CO2 levels remained constant since 1850!

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This study relies on facts and not on wishful thinking computations with complex climate models.

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CO2 levels remained constant since 1850

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket.

Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.

The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.

Read moreStudy: CO2 levels remained constant since 1850!

Carbon Dioxide Air Fertilization Improves Plant Growth and Quality, Cuts Operating Costs While Increasing Production

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The Importance of Carbon Dioxide (Co2) for Healthy Plant Growth

Most of the applied research on greenhouse crops has dealt with effects of environmental conditions on plant growth. Factors such as water, light, temperature and nutrients are more easily controlled for optimum growth. It is now possible to also control and accurately measure Carbon Dioxide concentrations in greenhouse and Controlled Environment Garden (CEG) atmospheres.

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) contributes to plant growth as part of the miracle of nature known as photosynthesis. This enables plants to combine Carbon Dioxide and water with the aid of light energy to form sugar. Some of these sugars are converted into complex compounds that increase dry solid plant substances for continued growth to final maturity. However, when the supply of carbon dioxide is cut off, or reduced, the complex plant cell structure cannot utilize the sun’s energy fully and growth or development is curtailed.

Read moreCarbon Dioxide Air Fertilization Improves Plant Growth and Quality, Cuts Operating Costs While Increasing Production

Congressman Ron Paul on the Copenhagen Treaty and the Cyber Security Act: ‘They are doing everything in the world to control the internet.’

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This is the New World Order taking away your money and your freedom.

On the Copenhagen Treaty:

– Lord Christopher Monckton: Is President Obama Poised to Surrender the Constitution and US Sovereignty to World Government?


Date: 5th Nov 09

Read moreCongressman Ron Paul on the Copenhagen Treaty and the Cyber Security Act: ‘They are doing everything in the world to control the internet.’

Al Gore could become world’s first carbon billionaire

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This is all about looting the taxpayer and the New World Order and not about science:

– Lord Christopher Monckton: Is President Obama Poised to Surrender the Constitution and US Sovereignty to World Government?

– EU Proposes €50bn Climate Change Deal Ahead of December’s Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen

Al Gore, the former US vice president, could become the world’s first carbon billionaire after investing heavily in green energy companies.

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Al Gore: Al Gore could become world’s first carbon billionaire Photo: AP

Last year Mr Gore’s venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology.

The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient.

The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.

The move means that venture capital company Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.

Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy as Mr Gore. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.

Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming sceptics scientists and even more scientists, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

Read moreAl Gore could become world’s first carbon billionaire

Insane British Government Global Warming Ad: Panic, Little Ones, It’s The Carbon Monster

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There is no such thing as man-made global warming! (See information at the end of the article.)

Global warming is just propaganda designed by the elite with their puppet Al Gore as frontman to loot the taxpayer and take away more of your civil rights.

– EU Proposes €50bn Climate Change Deal Ahead of December’s Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen

Watch:

– Lord Christopher Monckton: Is President Obama Poised to Surrender the Constitution and US Sovereignty to World Government?

the-carbon-monster

IF you don’t reduce your carbon footprint, then puppies will drown and bunny rabbits will die. And a terrifying, jagged-toothed monster with crazy hooked hands will descend from the clouds to eat you up.

Believe it or not, that is the message being delivered by the British government to children, in a L6 million ($10.7m) advertising campaign designed to scare the next generation witless about the alleged horrors of global warming.

Taking environmentalist propaganda to a new low, the TV ad shows a father reading a nightmarish bedtime story to his perturbed-looking young daughter.

He tells her of a land where the “weather is very, very strange”. There are “awful heatwaves” and “terrible storms and floods”. A cartoon bunny is shown crying as it starves on the dried, cracked earth, while elsewhere a puppy drowns in floodwaters.

Above it all, a sooty, blackened monster – CO2 made hideous flesh – surveys the horrors with a grotesque grin on its face.

And just in case the little girl, and the millions of children that the TV ad is aimed at, thinks this is merely a twisted fairytale, her father makes clear that it is reality.

It is the “horrible consequence”, he says, of human beings using too much CO2, much of which comes from “everyday things like keeping houses warm and driving cars”.

In short? Children who live in warm houses and who get lifts to school or football practice should feel guilty, because their evil antics are causing dogs to die and cute rabbits to go hungry.

Read moreInsane British Government Global Warming Ad: Panic, Little Ones, It’s The Carbon Monster

Global Warming Expert Prof. Latif: Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering “one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.”

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Scientists pull an about face on global warming

Imagine if Pope Benedict gave a speech saying the Catholic Church has had it wrong all these centuries; there is no reason priests shouldn’t marry. That might generate the odd headline, no?

Or if Don Cherry claimed suddenly to like European hockey players who wear visors and float around the ice, never bodychecking opponents.

Or Jack Layton insisted that unions are ruining the economy by distorting wages and protecting unproductive workers.

Or Stephen Harper began arguing that it makes good economic sense for Ottawa to own a car company. (Oh, wait, that one happened.) But at least, the Tories-buy-GM aberration made all the papers and newscasts.

When a leading proponent for one point of view suddenly starts batting for the other side, it’s usually newsworthy.

So why was a speech last week by Prof. Mojib Latif of Germany’s Leibniz Institute not given more prominence?

Latif is one of the leading climate modellers in the world. He is the recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC’s last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.

Yet last week in Geneva, at the UN’s World Climate Conference–an annual gathering of the so-called “scientific consensus” on man-made climate change –Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering “one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.”

The global warming theory has been based all along on the idea that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would absorb much of the greenhouse warming caused by a rise in man-made carbon dioxide, then they would let off that heat and warm the atmosphere and the land.

But as Latif pointed out, the Atlantic, and particularly the North Atlantic, has been cooling instead. And it looks set to continue a cooling phase for 10 to 20 more years.

“How much?” he wondered before the assembled delegates. “The jury is still out.”

Read moreGlobal Warming Expert Prof. Latif: Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering “one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.”

The Great Global Warming Swindle (Documentary)

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– Ron Paul: Global Warming Petition Signed by 31,478 Scientists (YouTube)
– NASA Study: Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Gobal Warming (DailyTech)
– Al Gore sued by over 30.000 Scientists for fraud (YouTube)
– World is getting colder: It’s the sun, not CO2, that’s to blame (Washington Times)
– Global warning: We are actually heading towards a new Ice Age, claim scientists (Daily Mail)
– Scientists find greenhouse gas hysteria to be myth (World Net Daily)
– 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved (Telegraph)
– Army: Sun, Not Man, Is Causing Climate Change (Wired)
– World might be heading towards Ice Age (Economic Times)

Now the government wants to change your diet to fight climate change

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“sheep, whose burping poses a serious threat to the environment”

Sure!
Sheep, the new climate change terrorists.
The government now wants to tell you what you can and what you can’t eat.

Burping of the lambs blows roast off menu

GIVE up lamb roasts and save the planet. Government advisers are developing menus to combat climate change by cutting out “high carbon” food such as meat from sheep, whose burping poses a serious threat to the environment.

Out will go kebabs, greenhouse tomatoes and alcohol. Instead, diners will be encouraged to consume more potatoes and seasonal vegetables, as well as pork and chicken, which generate fewer carbon emissions.

“Changing our lifestyles, including our diets, is going to be one of the crucial elements in cutting carbon emissions,” said David Kennedy, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change.

Kennedy has stopped eating his favourite doner kebabs because they contain lamb.

A government-sponsored study into greenhouse gases found that producing 2.2lb of lamb released the equivalent of 37lb of carbon dioxide.

Read moreNow the government wants to change your diet to fight climate change

Japan’s boffins: Global warming isn’t man-made

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Climate science is ‘ancient astrology’, claims report

Japanese scientists have made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change in a new report from its Energy Commission.

Three of the five researchers disagree with the UN’s IPCC view that recent warming is primarily the consequence of man-made industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Remarkably, the subtle and nuanced language typical in such reports has been set aside.

One of the five contributors compares computer climate modelling to ancient astrology. Others castigate the paucity of the US ground temperature data set used to support the hypothesis, and declare that the unambiguous warming trend from the mid-part of the 20th Century has ceased.

The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is astonishing rebuke to international pressure, and a vote of confidence in Japan’s native marine and astronomical research. Publicly-funded science in the West uniformly backs the hypothesis that industrial influence is primarily responsible for climate change, although fissures have appeared recently. Only one of the five top Japanese scientists commissioned here concurs with the man-made global warming hypothesis.

JSER is the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields, and acts as a government advisory panel. The report appeared last month but has received curiously little attention. So The Register commissioned a translation of the document – the first to appear in the West in any form. Below you’ll find some of the key findings – but first, a summary.

Read moreJapan’s boffins: Global warming isn’t man-made

World is getting colder: It’s the sun, not CO2, that’s to blame

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David J. Bellamy is a professor at three British universities and an officer in several conservation organizations. Mark Duchamp, a retired businessman, has investigated global- warming theory and written more than 100 articles.

After the wet and cold centuries of the Little Ice Age (around 1550-1850 A.D.), the world’s climate recuperated some warmth, but did not replicate the balmy period known as the Middle Age Warm Period (around 800-1300 A.D.), when the margins of Greenland were green and England had vineyards.

Climate began to cool again after World War II, for about 30 years. This is undisputed. The cooling occurred at a time when emissions of C02 were rising sharply from the reconstruction effort and from unprecedented development. It is important to realize that.

Related article: BBC abandons ‘impartiality’ on warming (Telegraph):
Again and again the BBC has been eager to promote every new scare raised by the advocates of man-made global warming. As late as August 28 this year it was still predicting that Arctic ice might soon disappear, just as this winter’ s refreezing was about to take ice-cover back to a point it was at 30 years ago.

By 1978 it had started to warm again, to everybody’s relief. But two decades later, after the temperature peaked in 1998 under the influence of El Nino, climate stopped warming for eight years; and in 2007 entered a cooling phase marked by lower solar radiation and a reversal of the cycles of warm ocean temperature in the Atlantic and the Pacific. And here again, it is important to note that this new cooling period is occurring concurrently with an acceleration in CO2 emissions, caused by the emergence of two industrial giants: China and India.

To anyone analyzing this data with common sense, it is obvious that factors other than CO2 emissions are ruling the climate. And the same applies to other periods of the planet’s history. Al Gore, in his famous movie “The Inconvenient Truth,” had simply omitted to say that for the past 420,000 years that he cited as an example, rises in CO2 levels in the atmosphere always followed increases in global temperature by at least 800 years. It means that CO2 can’t possibly be the cause of the warming cycles.

So, if it’s not CO2, what is it that makes the world’s temperature periodically rise and fall? The obvious answer is the sun, and sea currents in a subsidiary manner.

Read moreWorld is getting colder: It’s the sun, not CO2, that’s to blame

Oceans Passing Critical CO2 Threshold

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UXBRIDGE, Canada – An apparent rapid upswing in ocean acidity in recent years is wiping out coastal species like mussels, a new study has found.


Coral at the Great Barrier Reef. Rising carbon dioxide levels in the world’s oceans due to climate change, combined with rising sea temperatures, could accelerate coral bleaching, destroying some reefs before 2050, said an Australian study in January 2002. (Reuters)

“We’re seeing dramatic changes,” said Timothy Wootton of the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, lead author of the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study shows increases in ocean acidity that are more than 10 times faster than any prediction.

“It appears that we’ve crossed a threshold where the ocean can no longer buffer the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere,” Wootton told IPS.

Read moreOceans Passing Critical CO2 Threshold

Global warning: We are actually heading towards a new Ice Age, claim scientists

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It has plagued scientists and politicians for decades, but scientists now say global warming is not the problem.

We are actually heading for the next Ice Age, they claim.

British and Canadian experts warned the big freeze could bury the east of Britain in 6,000ft of ice.


A taste of the future: Plunging temperatures around Britain created dramatic 2-ft icicles over Sleightholme River in County Durham

Most of Scotland, Northern Ireland and England could be covered in 3,000ft-thick ice fields.

The expanses could reach 6,000ft from Aberdeen to Kent – towering above Ben Nevis, Britain’s tallest mountain.

And what’s more, the experts blame the global change on falling – rather than climbing – levels of greenhouse gases.

Lead author Thomas Crowley from the University of Edinburgh and Canadian colleague William Hyde say that currently vilified greenhouse gases – such as carbon dioxide – could actually be the key to averting the chill.

The warning, published in the authoritative journal Nature, is based on records of tiny marine fossils and the earth’s shifting orbit.


The Big chill: Experts warn that 3,000ft ice sheets could cover most of Britain

The Earth has seen dramatic climate fluctuations – veering between cold and warm extremes – over the past three million years, the researchers say.

And changes in the Earth’s orbit and slowly falling levels of carbon dioxide are the cause.

The team says we are approaching a turning point, in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years, which will lead to the new ice sheets smothering much of Europe, Asia and South America.

The theory, which is based on computer models, suggests ice sheets will also slash sea levels by up to 300m, so Russia and Alaska will be connected by land.

Read moreGlobal warning: We are actually heading towards a new Ice Age, claim scientists

Britons fear the carbon cops are coming

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LONDON (Reuters) – First there were the thought police, then the surveillance society, now Britons fear the carbon cops are coming to ensure compliance with climate change legislation, a survey showed on Wednesday.

And with warnings of global catastrophe ringing in their ears some people fear that failure to cut personal carbon emissions will eventually result in enforced carbon behaviour re-education, the Energy Saving Trust said.

It said 41 percent of Britons think the country will need its own Carbon Police Force by mid-century and one quarter believe repeat offenders will have to go into carbon rehab and take carbon addiction classes.

“The UK’s perception is that by 2050 we could have the sort of draconian infringements on our civil liberties that have been highlighted in our research. This need not be the case,” said EST chief Philip Sellwood said.

“The carbon emissions we all produce from our homes and travel amount to over 40 per cent of the UK’s total emissions so we all have a part to play.”

The survey coincides with the EST’s “Emission Impossible, a vision for a low carbon lifestyle by 2050.”

Read moreBritons fear the carbon cops are coming

Japanese Invent Car That Runs On Water

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Source: Nikkei Business Publications

Genepax Co Ltd explained the technologies used in its new fuel cell system “Water Energy System (WES),” which uses water as a fuel and does not emit CO2.

The system can generate power just by supplying water and air to the fuel and air electrodes, respectively, the company said at the press conference, which took place June 12, 2008, at the Osaka Assembly Hall.

The basic power generation mechanism of the new system is similar to that of a normal fuel cell, which uses hydrogen as a fuel. According to Genepax, the main feature of the new system is that it uses the company’s membrane electrode assembly (MEA), which contains a material capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical reaction.

Though the company did not reveal the details, it “succeeded in adopting a well-known process to produce hydrogen from water to the MEA,” said Hirasawa Kiyoshi, the company’s president. This process is allegedly similar to the mechanism that produces hydrogen by a reaction of metal hydride and water. But compared with the existing method, the new process is expected to produce hydrogen from water for longer time, the company said.

With the new process, the cell needs only water and air, eliminating the need for a hydrogen reformer and high-pressure hydrogen tank. Moreover, the MEA requires no special catalysts, and the required amount of rare metals such as platinum is almost the same as that of existing systems, Genepax said.

Unlike the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC), which uses methanol as a fuel, the new system does not emit CO2. In addition, it is expected to have a longer life because catalyst degradation (poisoning) caused by CO does not occur on the fuel electrode side. As it has only been slightly more than a year since the company completed the prototype, it plans to collect more data on the product life.

At the conference, Genepax unveiled a fuel cell stack with a rated output of 120W and a fuel cell system with a rated output of 300W. In the demonstration, the 120W fuel cell stack was first supplied with water by using a dry-cell battery operated pump. After power was generated, it was operated as a passive system with the pump turned off.

This time, the voltage of the fuel cell stack was 25-30V. Because the stack is composed of 40 cells connected in series, it is expected that the output per cell is 3W or higher, the voltage is about 0.5-0.7V, and the current is about 6-7A. The power density is likely to be not less than 30mW/cm2 because the reaction area of the cell is 10 x 10 cm.

Meanwhile, the 300W fuel cell system is an active system, which supplies water and air with a pump. In the demonstration, Genepax powered the TV and the lighting equipment with a lead-acid battery charged by using the system. In addition, the 300W system was mounted in the luggage room of a compact electric vehicle “Reva” manufactured by Takeoka Mini Car Products Co Ltd, and the vehicle was actually driven by the system.

Genepax initially planned to develop a 500W system, but failed to procure the materials for MEA in time and ended up in making a 300W system.

For the future, the company intends to provide 1kw-class generation systems for use in electric vehicles and houses. Instead of driving electric vehicles with this system alone, the company expects to use it as a generator to charge the secondary battery used in electric vehicles.

Although the production cost is currently about ¥2,000,000 (US$18,522), it can be reduced to ¥500,000 or lower if Genepax succeeds in mass production. The company believes that its fuel cell system can compete with residential solar cell systems if the cost can be reduced to this level.

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Reuters: Petrol Pricey? Japanese Invent Car That Runs On Water

Genepax (Japanese)

Genepax (English)

Source: BlackListedNews

Are you ready for WW2-style energy rationing?

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Analysis: Environment Minister Hilary Benn again rebuffed calls this week for WW2-style energy rationing to return to the UK. He was responding to a Select Committee report urging ministers to issue 45 million Britons with an energy trading “credit card” – a mammoth techno-bureaucratic exercise costing several billions of pounds a year to operate.

What’s interesting is how the normal parliamentary business was turned upside down.

Usually, it’s ministers who propose batty and unworkable legislation, and fail to cost it, while select committees are supposed to scrutinize the proposals: picking apart the logic and bogus cost estimates. But in this case the select committee in question – the “Environmental Audit Committee” – is positively evangelical about a return to rationing. Perhaps not surprisingly, ministers are wary of committing electoral suicide, or at least, not in quite such an obvious fashion.

Benn said his department DEFRA had made its own enquiry, which unlike the watchdog’s investigation, included costs. A rationing scheme would cost between £700m and £2bn to set up, he said, and between £1bn and £2bn a year to operate he said.

“In essence it is ahead of its time,” the minister said Tuesday. “The cost of implementing it would be quite high and there are a lot of practical problems to be overcome.” Front bench Tories are equally wary.

So what are the MPs proposing?

The ration, or “personal carbon allowance” or PCA, is a measure of an individual’s energy usage, either at home or traveling. Such usage is capped, and “further emissions rights will simply not be available,” the Committee says. You may choose between a holiday, and turning on the heating. Points win prizes, however, and frugal individuals would be rewarded financially from the creation of an internal market.

“We could not find or imagine analogues in other fields of human activity for individual carbon trading beyond rationing during and after World War 2,” the authors of the DEFRA-commissioned report “A Rough Guide to Individual Carbon Trading” wrote in 2006.

Read moreAre you ready for WW2-style energy rationing?